History, Natural History & the Arts
After the fall of the forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point during the French and Indian War in the fall of 1759, General Jeffrey Amherst ordered the building of the Crown Point Road.
The road was to run across what is now Vermont between Crown Point and The Fort at No. 4 on the Connecticut River in what is now Charlestown, New Hampshire. [Read more…] about Crown Point Road: Opening Northern New England & Lake Champlain
July 7th marks the anniversary of the 1777 Battle of Hubbardton, in Vermont. The battle was one of the only engagements in what’s now the state of Vermont during the American Revolutionary War, although the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in 1775 and the Battle of Valcour Island in 1776 did spill over into Vermont as well.
Like the Battle of Bennington, it holds a particularly outsized role in the conflict itself owing to it having taken place in the lead-up to the Battles of Saratoga. [Read more…] about July 7, 1777: The Battle of Hubbardton in Vermont
If you walk into the Vermont Historical Society’s museum in Montpelier, you’ll a flag hanging from the wall behind the admission desk: the blue and green Green Mountain Boys flag.
It’s a flag that’s been wrapped up with a hefty dose of legend and mythology. [Read more…] about The Green Mountain Boys & The Evolution of Vermont’s State Flag
On March 4th, the State of Vermont celebrated its 232nd birthday. March 4th, 1791 is the formal start of what we now know of as Vermont: the 14th state in the union, with a continuity that has withstood the last two centuries. But the idea of Vermont had its own torturous birth in 1777, the result of land grants from the colonies of New Hampshire and New York, and those settlers making those lands their own. [Read more…] about The Anniversary of the State of Vermont
Between 1749 and 1764 colonial governor of the Province of New Hampshire Benning Wenworth made about 135 land grants (now known as the New Hampshire Grants), including 131 towns, on land claimed by New Hampshire west of the Connecticut River. This area was also claimed by the colonial Province of New York.
From the 1760s until 1779 the Green Mountain Boys, led by Ethan Allen and his brother Ira, controlled the area. Based at a tavern in Bennington, they evaded arrest warrants from New York State and harassed settlers from New York, surveyors, and other officials, often with severe beatings and destruction of their belongings. [Read more…] about Albany Posse! The Capture of Remember Baker, Captain of the Green Mountain Boys
Since 2016 the Green Mountain Boys Project have been researching the celebrated military unit, which lived and served along what was then the New York and New Hampshire border (in modern day Vermont) from the 1760s until 1779.
The Green Mountain Boys, led by Ethan Allen and his brother Ira, controlled the area of disputed land grants. Based at a tavern in Bennington, they evaded arrest warrants from New York State and harassed settlers from New York, surveyors, and other officials, often with severe beatings and destruction of their belongings. [Read more…] about Green Mountain Boys in the American Revolution